A wide variety of portable tree seats or stands are known and currently used. Outdoorsman such as campers, naturalists, and hunters carry tree seats into wooded areas and can mount the seat to a tree at a suitable height. Tree seats are often mounted at a high elevation on a tree to give the outdoorsman a wide field of view while at the same time shielding him from observation by forest wildlife. Tree seats are also used to provide comfortable and convenient seating at normal chair height.
The structure typically employed by a portable tree seat to support the weight of a user is that of a collapsible triangular truss. One leg of this truss is formed by the tree trunk, a second leg is formed by a seating platform rigidly affixed to the tree trunk by ropes, screws, buckles, or other fasteners, and the third leg of the truss formed by an angled brace running from the seating platform to the tree trunk at a spot below the joint of the platform to the tree trunk.
In order to provide comfortable seating, the platform must be both wide enough for the user's seat and extend outwardly from the tree far enough so that the user has a secure perch on the seat. The best range for both these distances is 9 to 12 inches.
A seating platform of these dimensions will tend to be bulky and heavy. Prior art tree seats have alleviated these problems by utilizing flexible fabric seats on frames as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,927,733 and 3,730,294. Another approach is to reduce the weight of a rigid platform by piercing it with holes as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,749,200. However, the pierced platforms are not any less bulky, and the fabric-on-frame platforms, while compact, require many manufacturing operations to produce.